teatimelit

Review: Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food and Love edited by Elisa Chapman and Caroline Tung Richmond

A stunning collection of short stories about the intersection of family, culture, and food in the lives in teens, from bestselling and critically acclaimed authors, including Sandhya Menon, Anna-Marie McLemore, and Rin Chupeco.

A shy teenager attempts to express how she really feels through the pastries she makes at her family’s pasteleria. A tourist from Montenegro desperately seeks a magic soup dumpling that can cure his fear of death. An aspiring chef realizes that butter and soul are the key ingredients to win a cooking competition that could win him the money to save his mother’s life.

Welcome to Hungry Hearts Row, where the answers to most of life’s hard questions are kneaded, rolled, baked. Where a typical greeting is, “Have you had anything to eat?” Where magic and food and love are sometimes one in the same.

Told in interconnected short stories, Hungry Hearts explores the many meanings food can take on beyond mere nourishment. It can symbolize love and despair, family and culture, belonging and home.

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Let’s Talk: Audiobooks I Want to Read in 2022

Hi, hello friends! Like most people, I adore audiobooks. I love putting my earphones in and getting lost in a book, all while doing another task at the same time. Due to listening to them at double speed (I physically cannot pay attention to them if they are not on 2x speed), I get through them pretty quickly so I’m always on the hunt for a new one. My personal favourite service for audiobooks is Scribd, and while this post is not sponsored, it’s a service I never shut up about. Their selection is so fantastic, I can almost always find my next audiobook on there. So, I thought it would be fun to go through their library and pick out some books I hope to listen to this year. Be sure to let me know in the comments below if you’ve ready any of these books! Without anything further, let’s get into the list! 

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ARC Review: Dream, Annie, Dream by Waka T. Brown

As the daughter of immigrants who came to America for a better life, Annie Inoue was raised to dream big. And at the start of seventh grade, she’s channeling that irrepressible hope into becoming the lead in her school play.

So when Annie lands an impressive role in the production of The King and I, she’s thrilled . . . until she starts to hear grumbles from her mostly white classmates that she only got the part because it’s an Asian play with Asian characters. Is this all people see when they see her? Is this the only kind of success they’ll let her have–one that they can tear down or use race to belittle?

Disheartened but determined, Annie channels her hurt into a new dream: showing everyone what she’s made of.

Waka T. Brown, author of While I Was Away, delivers an uplifting coming-of-age story about a Japanese American girl’s fight to make space for herself in a world that claims to celebrate everyone’s differences but doesn’t always follow through. 

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Let’s Talk: 2022 Reading and Content Goals

Hello my sundrops! Happy New Year! I hope that you’re having a glorious start to 2022 so far! The year is off to a pretty good start on my end because I was able to take this week off of work, so there has been some lounging and reading!

If we’re being completely honest, I was not vibing with the idea of sitting down and writing a review during my week off. Resting and recharging is important and the end of 2021 really wiped me out! So, when I was thinking of what my first post of 2022 would be, it only made sense to start it off with some of my reading and content goals for the year! Plus, I’m hoping that by posting it here and sharing it with all of you, I’ll be more likely to accomplish these things. We love accountability! 

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Review: The Simple Wild by K.A. Tucker

Calla Fletcher wasn’t even two when her mother took her and fled the Alaskan wild, unable to handle the isolation of the extreme, rural lifestyle, leaving behind Calla’s father, Wren Fletcher, in the process. Calla never looked back, and at twenty-six, a busy life in Toronto is all she knows. But when Calla learns that Wren’s days may be numbered, she knows that it’s time to make the long trip back to the remote frontier town where she was born.

She braves the roaming wildlife, the odd daylight hours, the exorbitant prices, and even the occasional—dear God—outhouse, all for the chance to connect with her father: a man who, despite his many faults, she can’t help but care for. While she struggles to adjust to this rugged environment, Jonah—the unkempt, obnoxious, and proud Alaskan pilot who helps keep her father’s charter plane company operational—can’t imagine calling anywhere else home. And he’s clearly waiting with one hand on the throttle to fly this city girl back to where she belongs, convinced that she’s too pampered to handle the wild.

Jonah is probably right, but Calla is determined to prove him wrong. Soon, she finds herself forming an unexpected bond with the burly pilot. As his undercurrent of disapproval dwindles, it’s replaced by friendship—or perhaps something deeper? But Calla is not in Alaska to stay and Jonah will never leave. It would be foolish of her to kindle a romance, to take the same path her parents tried—and failed at—years ago. It’s a simple truth that turns out to be not so simple after all.

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Wrap Up: December 2021

Hi, hello friends and welcome to our final wrap up of 2021! We’ve had such a wonderful year talking about books with you, and we cannot wait to see what 2022 brings us. Thank you to everyone who has followed us this year, we truly couldn’t have done it without you!

This month Caitlyn read 15 books, Cossette read 15 books, and Mary read 14 books. 

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Teatimereads January Pick: Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

Hello everyone! As 2021 comes to a close and the new year begins, we want to say a big thank you to everyone who has joined us on our journey thus far! We’re so excited to be going into our second year of teatimereads and we’re thrilled to announce that our first book of 2022 will be DAUGHTER OF THE MOON GODDESS by Sue Lynn Tan!

Here is the full summary for Daughter of the Moon Goddess:

A captivating debut fantasy inspired by the legend of Chang’e, the Chinese moon goddess, in which a young woman’s quest to free her mother pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm.

Growing up on the moon, Xingyin is accustomed to solitude, unaware that she is being hidden from the feared Celestial Emperor who exiled her mother for stealing his elixir of immortality. But when Xingyin’s magic flares and her existence is discovered, she is forced to flee her home, leaving her mother behind.

Alone, powerless, and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom, a land of wonder and secrets. Disguising her identity, she seizes an opportunity to learn alongside the emperor’s son, mastering archery and magic, even as passion flames between her and the prince.

To save her mother, Xingyin embarks on a perilous quest, confronting legendary creatures and vicious enemies across the earth and skies. But when treachery looms and forbidden magic threatens the kingdom, she must challenge the ruthless Celestial Emperor for her dream—striking a dangerous bargain in which she is torn between losing all she loves or plunging the realm into chaos.

Daughter of the Moon Goddess begins an enchanting, romantic duology which weaves ancient Chinese mythology into a sweeping adventure of immortals and magic—where love vies with honor, dreams are fraught with betrayal, and hope emerges triumphant.

Links for Daughter of the Moon Goddess: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound

Content Warnings for Daughter of the Moon Goddess: Death, gore, violence, blood, fire, confinement, torture, kidnapping, grief, sexual harassment 

We’re wishing all of you a wonderful holiday season and we’re looking forward to continuing to connect with you all in the new year!

Announcement: Holiday Hiatus

Hi, hello friends! 

We hope you have all had a wonderful December so far, and that the holiday season has been a positive one. We wanted to do a quick announcement to say that teatimelit is going on a holiday hiatus!

Our hiatus will be from December 21 – January 4, after which we will continue posting as normal!

You can still contact us via our contact form, or our Twitter @teatimelits! 

Have a happy holiday season, and a wonderful new year! 

Book Recs: 2022 Releases, based off of your favorite Taylor Swift Album

I had such a blast putting together my 2021 Releases based off of your favorite Taylor Swift album last year that I knew I had to do it again this year! If you’re new here, I’m Cossette, and I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan, to the point where I roped Caitlyn into doing a book recommendation for every single Taylor Swift song. Just like last year, I wanted to combine two of my loves: Taylor Swift, and books to bring you thirty two of my most anticipated 2022 releases, while assigning them to different Taylor eras! I haven’t read most of these, so it’ll be fun to see how off I am at the end of 2022, once I’ve read these.

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Let’s Talk: Favorite Reads of 2021 Part 2

I feel like just yesterday it was January, and then I blinked and we’re at the end of the year. This year has flown by SO quickly! While this year has been…quite challenging, I will say that in general it’s been my best reading year. So far this year I’ve read 206 books, which was 56 books over my original goal of 150.

In June I made a post highlighting my favorite books from the first half of the year, which you can read here. Now that the year is over, I thought it only made sense to follow up with my favorite books from the second half of the year. I discovered a lot of new books that I loved, revisited some old favorites, and read a few that I probably would not read again. 

This post only lists books that I read for the first time this year – no rereads because if so, we all know what books would be listed…

As always, I have done my best to list trigger warnings based on my own personal notes, trigger warnings from other reviews and what is listed on websites like Book Trigger Warnings and Trigger Warning Database if needed. That being said, there may be things that I have forgotten and if so I apologize! If you’ve read any of these books and notice that I’m missing some triggers, please let me know so that I can update the trigger lists!

✩ indicates an ARC

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